Time running out for firms to grow pot outdoors as they await licenses
May 16, 2019 Armina Ligaya, The Canadian Press 0
Medical marijuana is shown in Toronto, Nov. 5, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy
TORONTO — As warmer weather makes its way across the country, many licensed cannabis producers are still waiting for the green light from Ottawa to start an outdoor crop — and the clock is ticking.
Health Canada says it has granted one license that includes outdoor cultivation — which many companies are banking is cheaper than growing pot in a greenhouse or indoor facility — as of May 9.
The agency would not say which company received its approval, for confidentiality reasons, but Good Buds on Salt Spring Island, B.C., believes it is the first, co-founder Tyler Rumi said.
“We were biting our fingernails a bit. You can’t change the season outdoors. So we are extremely grateful and excited to get it when we did,” he said of its licence issued on May 10.
But for the many other licensed producers still in the queue, the window is closing for them to get their plants in the ground and produce an ample harvest by the fall.
As of March 31, there were 191 applications in the queue for a licence including an outdoor area, which could be for cultivation or destruction and composting, Health Canada spokeswoman Tammy Jarbeau said.
Some of these companies are looking to ramp up production of cannabis for use in edibles, topicals and other next-generation pot products when they are legalized in the coming months.
In April, CannTrust Holdings Inc. said it had purchased 33 hectares of land in British Columbia, part of its plan to acquire 81 hectares earmarked for outdoor cultivation.
In March, WeedMD Inc. said it closed a purchase of an additional 24 hectares of land adjacent to its existing facility in Strathroy, Ont. and that it has applied for a licence to expand beyond its greenhouse cultivation there.
48North Cannabis Corp. has already secured farmland in Brant County, Ontario, where it intends to grow organic cannabis. Co-chief executive Jeannette VanderMarel said it has roughly 40,000 plants it has begun propagating indoors to be transferred outside, but its hope is to grow its crop starting from seeds outside.
“Those grown from seeds have a stronger tap root system, that will allow for a more robust plant,” she said. “It’s important to grow from seeds.”
Its aim is to plant 300,000 plants, roughly 70 per cent of which will take anywhere between 13 to 16 weeks from seed to harvest. The remainder will be auto flowering cannabis, which are not sensitive to light and will continuously flower.
She estimates that the cost of growing indoors is roughly $2 per gram, or between 90 cents to $1 per gram in a greenhouse. Outdoor-grown pot, she anticipates, is “markedly cheaper” at 25 cents per gram.
With a licence to grow outdoors, 48North expects to be able to ramp up its production from 5,000 kilograms to in excess of 45,000 kilograms.
Of that outdoor harvest, the company expects to earmark 10 per cent for sale as dried flower and the remainder for extraction and use in products such as edibles, which are expected to be legalized in the coming months.
48North believes their outdoor licence is “imminent.”
“Health Canada is well aware of our seasonal realities, that we need to get planting,” VanderMarel said.
However, unlike greenhouse operations or indoor warehouses, there are concerns that an outdoor crop will be exposed to the elements and the potential impact of pesticides from nearby farms.
“If all goes well, growing outdoors could be a viable business model, but the potential for losing or producing a non-compliant crop is higher than at indoor facilities,” said Brenna Boonstra, director, quality and regulatory with consulting firm Cannabis Compliance. “In an outdoor grow, pests are harder to control, light is unpredictable, soil could be contaminated, and weather damage is a real possibility.”
VanderMarel said it has approached its neighbouring farmers in Brant County and asked them not grow crops that require pesticides to mitigate the risk.
“We will gladly pay them… just to ensure that we don’t have any contamination,” she added.
Good Buds co-founder Alex Rumi said it is for this reason that it chose Salt Spring Island, where there are a lot of family farms that do not use pesticides.
“We checked with our neighbours to see how they were cultivating… We’re pretty confident that there is a very low risk.”
Concerns have also been raised about the negative effects of outdoor cannabis crops on the surrounding community.
Residents in communities with greenhouse operations have complained about the strong odour and light pollution emanating from the facilities.
VanderMarel notes that 48North’s site in Brant County was once the site of a large hog operation, which “don’t tend to smell nice.”
Still, to mitigate this risk the company selected cannabis strains with terpenes that have more of a lavender and citrus odour, she said.
“Our plants do have a scent, especially during the last three to four weeks of flowering,” she said. “But it’s a short term scent.”
Tyler Rumi said this also weighed on their choice of Salt Spring Island for their outdoor operation, where they intend to plant up to 100,000 plants starting in June.
“It has long been a safe haven for cannabis culture,” he said. “A lot of people on this island love cannabis, and if they don’t, they probably love someone who loves cannabis.”
Armina Ligaya, The Canadian Press

Photo Gracie Malley for Cannabis Now
STRAINS
Phylos Bioscience Sparks Outrage Over New Breeding Program Announcement
With Phylos Bioscience’s recent announcement that they are launching an in-house breeding program, many growers who provided their genetics to Phylos to be a part of their Galaxy strain database and mapping project are up in arms. The company’s CEO released a statement saying the company has no intentions of competing with breeders, but an uncovered video shows him pitching investors on how Phylos’s strains will dominate the cannabis market in the years to come.
https://cannabisnow.com/phylos-bioscience-sparks-outrage-over-new-breeding-program-announcement/

Dat het galaxy systeem niet goed werkt, blijkt wel hieruit.
Diegene van wie het afkomstig is met ook een fake telefoonnummer.
Dit is verão da lata
The case of the 22 tons of marijuana that were thrown in the Brazilian coast turning the season of 1987 into an incredible urban fable.
Of the seven traffickers, only the cook Stephen Skelton (center) was arrested.
He spent a year in jail and was extradited.

Misschien dat dit iets kan ophelderen.
Phylos bioscience was opgericht om via dna testen te achterhalen naar de oorsprong van Cannabis & dat neer te zetten in een galaxy.
Één van de inzenders van onderzoeksmateriaal schreef dit nog recentelijk;
More like 5 years ,,,,,, I got manipulated to Big Time ..... They stole our exp time strains to build maps , so they could show up out of know where and breed , I WAS TOLD TO MY FACE IN PERSON BY ROB CLARKE THEY ARE NOT BREEDING NOR GONING START A SEED COMPANY ,Were we both lied too??? ?? They needed old strains to figure out origins of cannabis and start the Galaxy
That was in April / March 2014 ..... same in 2016 when they asked for more , here I am 5 years later out of over 10 submissions only 3 tested ,
on phylos since galaxy has been put up those individual lists have changed big time , I took screen shots .. David watsons results on same strain vary over years ..... there not stealing from dead plant material or old unviable seed , "I Don't Think" ? , But live plant submission of any type has high possibility to be tissue cultured ...

To our community,
We announced our plant breeding program on Tuesday. Unfortunately, some people are accusing us of stealing or claiming ownership over plant samples that have been sent to us. We take this seriously and we want to share more clarity and context.
We’re starting a breeding program.
We started Phylos with a simple mission: to better understand cannabis. We always thought we’d get into plant breeding, but we thought we’d do it exclusively by bringing our science to breeding partners. After 5 years, we’ve learned a lot by analyzing the data from thousands of plants. But that data is not useful for breeding. The information on the Galaxy can’t be used to generate the genetic markers that power breeding programs.
The biggest thing we learned was that to have a real impact on the world we needed to launch our own in-house research program where we’ll grow thousands of plants, test them, generate data, and study that data to drive our breeding work. We have a team of data scientists and plant breeders that will drive an entirely new kind of breeding program, one that is founded on analysis we perform on our own plants, in house.
We would never steal your plants.
Not only is it impossible to recreate a plant from the dead samples you give us, but we also would never do it because it goes directly against our values and would destroy the trust the community has given us. We’re working with long-time Oregon breeders to negotiate fair licensing contracts for the seeds and clones that will serve as the foundation for our breeding program. We are not stealing anything to leverage our breeding work.
We're going to create outrageous new weed.
Alright, we hear you. This statement on social media was insensitive and lacked context. For that, we own the comments “made by sellouts for chads” and “lying ass buttholes” among some other really amazing ones. In all seriousness, we’re not going to compete directly with you. Our breeding work will be focused on difficult challenges like PM resistance. We’ll also be breeding hemp for industrial uses like hempcrete, bioplastics, and carbon sequestration. And we’ll also make some high-THC, high-terpene plants too—but those will be plants we’re committed to bringing back to the community. And we’ll let small farmers breed with them if they want to.
We're working on royalty-based in-licensing agreements with breeders.
We are in negotiations with a number of well-established breeders to distribute their best varieties under their brand as healthy, tissue culture clones through our nursery project, Conception. These breeders will get generous royalties for every plantlet sold. We’ll keep sharing details as we have them and we’re open to anyone who’s interested in working with us on this front.
We’re excited to share insights from the work we’re doing and will continue to funnel our learnings into tools for the cannabis community. We want to hear from you if you have any concerns. Email us, call us, DM us on Instagram, or stick pins in a Voodoo doll. We just want you to know we’re here for you first and foremost.
Sincerely,
All of us at Phylos